The invention relates to a loader, especially a bucket loader for underground use in mining, consisting of a rear car carrying the drive unit including the hydraulic pump unit and the driver's station, and of a front car connected to the rear car by a hinge coupling and carrying the bucket and the hydraulic system for operating it.
Such bucket loaders, which are steered by pivoting the front car in relation to the rear car, have become increasingly popular in recent years; special loaders of this kind having a large bucket capacity and accordingly a high driving power for propulsion and for the hydraulic bucket operating system have been developed especially for underground operation in salt mines and ore mining operations. On account of the often very low height of the mine galleries and chambers, such underground loaders must be of extremely low construction, which makes it necessary to arrange the units in tandem, inasmuch as the width of the loader is also limited by space conditions. The loaders therefore are of great length, on the order of 9 meters and more. Loaders of this length cannot, as a rule, turn around in the working face area, and therefore they are so constructed that they are able to run in both directions of travel, i.e., forward and reverse, at full propulsion speed. Since the driver has approximately equal visibility in either direction of travel, the driver's station is situated on the rear car in the central part of the loader, i.e., in the immediate vicinity of the coupling, offset to one side of the longitudinal axis of the loader, with the driver facing transversely of the direction of travel. Thus, when shifting from forward to reverse travel, the driver needs only to turn his head about 90.degree. from the direction he is facing. The driver's view, however, is limited in both directions of travel due to the great length of the loader, because the driver's seat is set so low that the driver can see only straight over the top of the loader. The extremely low, but consequently also greatly elongated construction makes it necessary, as a rule, to bring the loader into the pits piece by piece and assemble it there, and also to perform all maintenance and repair work on the loader underground, since bringing the loader to shops above ground would again make it necessary to take the loader apart.